Teenagers’ use of Snapchat and Instagram grows

EMarketer predict that Facebook’s US monthly users, between the ages 12 and 17 years old, will decline by 3.4% this year. This would be a higher percentage decline than last year’s 1.2%.

According to eMarketer, this trend is the same for teenagers in the UK. They predict that Facebook’s 12-17 year old users will fall by 2.8%, yet they do not provide a figure for last year’s decline of teenagers’ use of Facebook.

To further add to their report, eMarketer forecast US teenagers monthly use of Snapchat will grow by 25.8% , and their use of Instagram will grow by 23.8% . Both of these percentages have been modified to a higher rate of growth from their previous 2017 prediction.

Oscar Orozco, eMarketer analyst, suggests that teens are migrating to Snapchat and Instagram because of their visual content. Orozco believes that visual content is how teenagers communicate.

Similar statics of growth are predicted for UK use of Snapchat and Instagram. However, eMarketer’s UK statistic are more general, looking at the UK’s overall use of these two social media platforms, rather than focusing on teenagers. Therefore, Facebook’s decline of UK teenager users (see statistic at the beginning) and Instagram and Snapchat’s growth is only correlational, meaning other factors could have contributed to this trend.

In addition, although Snapchat, and Instagram are growing, Facebook continues to dominate the market with 2 billion monthly users, which is a 17 per cent increase from last year. Stunning growth for a tech giant of this size.